Basketball has become an increasingly popular sport, with backyard and neighborhood basketball goals increasing in popularity. These backyard basketball goals often function well for families and communities with a wide variety of people playing the game, including grown adults and small children. Consequently, adjustable height basketball goals have become a favorite product in backyard or personal basketball courts as they allow individuals of various heights and skill levels to play on the same basketball goal.
Many adjustable height basketball goals have been proposed for accomplishing incremental adjustment of the vertical height of a basketball backboard assembly. Such arrangements may often incorporate a parallelogram type support frame capable of permitting vertical movement of the backboard while maintaining a parallel relationship between the basketball rim and a playing surface. Additionally, various releasable locking arrangements have been proposed for holding the backboard assembly at a desired height.
In many of these prior art systems, for a user to lower the height of the backboard assembly, the user must manually disengage a latch or other locking mechanism. Disengaging the latch permits the user to lower or raise the backboard until the goal is located at the desired height. The latch must then be engaged in order to lock the goal height. Other devices such as levers and/or switches, located behind the backboard and/or on handles extending down from the backboard, may activate the latch. Often, the latch needs to be activated and held open while adjusting the height of the backboard assembly. This may be especially difficult for some individuals, especially smaller children attempting to make height adjustments when the backboard is locked at its maximum height.
Unfortunately, many prior art systems are complex and expensive, requiring multiple moving parts to control movement and lock the backboard in place. To reduce the complexity of the basketball goal elevator systems, some basketball goal assemblies include a ratchet system allowing the backboard and goal to be ratcheted up incrementally. A pole or other such element may be used to push the assembly upward.
Unfortunately, upon reaching the last ratchet or the highest position, previous systems failed to return to the lowest height without manually disengaging the ratchet. In traditional systems, the disengaging of the ratchet included the use of an end of a long pole to disengage the pawl from the teeth of the ratchet before the backboard could be lowered. Once disengaged, the backboard would fall under its own weight to its lowest position before it was capable of being ratcheted up to a desired height. However, the release of the pawl typically required precise and difficult positioning of the end of the pole on the pawl located underneath or behind the backboard. This positioning of a pole may be especially difficult due to the small target that the pawl presents, a situation that may be made worse when the backboard is at the highest position.
Furthermore, for some individuals, such as small children, the effort of positioning a long pole to both disengage the pawl and lower the weight of the backboard may be quite difficult. As a result, some individuals may be discouraged from changing the height of the backboard due to the difficulty of accurately releasing the pawl.
Therefore, there is a need for an adjustable basketball backboard assembly that can be incrementally adjusted and easily lowered by individuals of various heights and skill levels.